Grey blacks with internal player + EVR (3 Viewers)

[HomeY]

But that fix seems specific to Media Center. However, part of the fix is to disable the "Use Application Settings" parameter in CCC. Have any of you tried that, i.e. set Pixel Format to RGB Limited and uncheck "Use Application Settings"?

Yes, i did

Setting it to limited means that the output levels will be 16-235. This is however what I do not want ...

Why wouldn't you want that?? (Since all video material is encoded within those levels.)

 

[damaster]

But that fix seems specific to Media Center. However, part of the fix is to disable the "Use Application Settings" parameter in CCC. Have any of you tried that, i.e. set Pixel Format to RGB Limited and uncheck "Use Application Settings"?

Yes, i did

Dammit, I'm all out of ideas. One of the devs who knows MP's EVR code will have to figure this one out. Or hopefully Catalyst 9.7 will resolve the problem but somehow I doubt it... it's a race and I bet the MP devs will fix it first!

 

[HomeY]

Dammit, I'm all out of ideas. One of the devs who knows MP's EVR code will have to figure this one out. Or hopefully Catalyst 9.7 will resolve the problem but somehow I doubt it... it's a race and I bet the MP devs will fix it first!

My thoughts exactly
I've got blacks in MP with brightnes to -16 and Contrast to +16 (AVIVO Color settings!), but i've lost ALL my details by that setting, and it already annoys me after 1 night of watching

Does someone know a good way to control the controls (Play, Stop, Exit, FFWD, RWD) of MPC-HC with a remote? Using an external player seems the only options atm.

 

[damaster]

Dammit, I'm all out of ideas. One of the devs who knows MP's EVR code will have to figure this one out. Or hopefully Catalyst 9.7 will resolve the problem but somehow I doubt it... it's a race and I bet the MP devs will fix it first!

My thoughts exactly
I've got blacks in MP with AVIVO Color to -16 and Contrast to +16, but i've lost ALL my details by that setting, and it already annoys me after 1 night of watching

Does someone know a good way to control the controls (Play, Stop, Exit, FFWD, RWD) of MPC-HC with a remote? Using an external player seems the only options atm.

Why don't you just roll back to 9.1? Using an external player is clunky and not very user friendly...

 

[Dr Tone]

Dammit, I'm all out of ideas. One of the devs who knows MP's EVR code will have to figure this one out. Or hopefully Catalyst 9.7 will resolve the problem but somehow I doubt it... it's a race and I bet the MP devs will fix it first!

My thoughts exactly
I've got blacks in MP with AVIVO Color to -16 and Contrast to +16, but i've lost ALL my details by that setting, and it already annoys me after 1 night of watching

Does someone know a good way to control the controls (Play, Stop, Exit, FFWD, RWD) of MPC-HC with a remote? Using an external player seems the only options atm.

Why don't you just roll back to 9.1? Using an external player is clunky and not very user friendly...

I'm going to give 9.1 a go tonight.

On a side note, when did ATI add the dynamic contrast ratio check box for 4 series cards? I wonder if it was 9.2?

 

[HomeY]

Why don't you just roll back to 9.1? Using an external player is clunky and not very user friendly...

I'm going to give 9.1 a go tonight.

On a side note, when did ATI add the dynamic contrast ratio check box for 4 series cards? I wonder if it was 9.2?

9.1 gives incorrect blacklevels here

 

[damaster]

Why don't you just roll back to 9.1? Using an external player is clunky and not very user friendly...

I'm going to give 9.1 a go tonight.

On a side note, when did ATI add the dynamic contrast ratio check box for 4 series cards? I wonder if it was 9.2?

9.1 gives incorrect blacklevels here

Yes but that was over a week ago and you've learned a lot since then

I would suggest rolling back to 9.1 (cleanly, use DriverCleaner .NET in Safe Mode to remove all ATI components) and then doing the AVS HD 709 test patterns test to be sure.

 

[zunixnuz]

I made a complete new system install with Vista32+SP1, Catalyst 9.6 and MP 1.0.2.
The wrong black levels still exist, no change
But also i am still able to reproduce the wrong black levels with MPC-HC player by configure the
output settings to "EVR Custom Pres" and select "Direct3D Fullscreen (remove tearing)".
With standard "EVR" black levels are ok!
So it seems to be that MP also uses this EVR mode which produce wrong black levels (on specific Radeon's)...

 

[damaster]

I made a complete new system install with Vista32+SP1, Catalyst 9.6 and MP 1.0.2.
The wrong black levels still exist, no change
But also i am still able to reproduce the wrong black levels with MPC-HC player by configure the
output settings to "EVR Custom Pres" and select "Direct3D Fullscreen (remove tearing)".
With standard "EVR" black levels are ok!
So it seems to be that MP also uses this EVR mode which produce wrong black levels (on specific Radeon's)...

MP definitely uses EVR Custom Presenter, not sure about the Direct3D Fullscreen part though.

Has anybody searched the MPC-HC forums or posted there about this issue? Or posted a bug report to the Catalyst Crew? This is definitely an ATI problem.

EDIT: Look what I found folks: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1252740#post1252740

 

[Dr Tone]

for the record, I have an ATI 4850 and have the grey level problems. So is not just related to ATI 4670 cards.

Yes it would seem this is a problem related to the ATI 4000 series cards. There must be something in MP's EVR code that causes these cards to compress the video levels.

The 2000 and 3000 series cards work just fine.

See this thread which discusses a similar issue in Media Center: The Green Button - Video Quality: When will Media Center get serious ? and from that thread this seems to be the fix:

1,) Add nominalrange=1 (dword) to registry. 2.) In ATI CCC under avivo video then "all settings" for color UNCHECK "Use Application settings". 3.) Set HDMI mode to RGB Limited or 4:4:4. 4.) Enjoy consistent black levels accross ALL applications.....

But that fix seems specific to Media Center. However, part of the fix is to disable the "Use Application Settings" parameter in CCC. Have any of you tried that, i.e. set Pixel Format to RGB Limited and uncheck "Use Application Settings"?

Question becomes where do you add the nominalrange=1 key/value pair? Under ATI?

Never mind this seems to be it:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Debug\ehPresenter.dll "NominalRange"=dword:1

Which makes me think this is a VMC dll and it may not help with media portal.